Innovation Anthology #302:
Before the late 1980’s no one had ever heard of Mad Cow disease.
Then suddenly, hundreds of thousands of cattle in the United Kingdom came down with disease. Then it was discovered that humans could catch it as well from eating infected beef.
Dr. Stephen Moore is Chair of Bovine Genomics at the University of Alberta and a prion scientist.
DR. STEPHEN MOORE: I think we’re better at detecting these things, frankly. We pick things up earlier. The food agencies try to control it. The disease agencies try to control it early so we hear all about it in the press. BSE may have been with us for hundreds of years. Se don’t know. The fact of the matter is, we never had a big outbreak like in the UK. And that’s spurned the subsequent outbreaks in other countries due to the importation of meat and bonemeal or animals coming in for breeding etc. The world is a smaller place. I think that contributes to the spread of disease People travel world wide very frequently. Animals travel world wide very frequently. So the potential is there for things to spread a lot more easily than maybe 20 years ago.
That was bovine geneticist and prion researcher, Dr. Stephen Moore.
Thanks today to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
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Sponsor
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Program Date: 2010-03-30